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Every once in a while, I go on a creative bender. I’m not proud of it; it’s just the way I’m built. Yesterday (and a bit of this morning), my artistic tonic of choice was the obscure 19th-century art of the ambigram. (Update: Click the previous sentence to see the video, now live on lynda.com.) You know, those words that read the same way regardless of how you rotate the page. For example, here’s my name. Turn it upside-down and it’s still my name. Damn, I have a long name.

An ambigram can also be a piece of art that reads as one word one way and becomes another when turned upside-down. For example, can you guess what this word looks like when spun 180 degrees?

If you guessed “cat vomit,” you’re wrong. Here’s the correct answer:

These days, we naturally assume that the act of formatting the written word is a matter of selecting from a bunch of predefined fonts. Or maybe, just maybe, hand-drawn type is new again.

Did I mention that I just finished recording two movies about this very topic for my Deke’s Techniques series? For my esteemed video publisher lynda.com? By my reckoning, these movies will go live on October 18. Which means, as ever: Keep watching.

“The first word is Art. That’s all I got.” I explain there’s more. “Yeah, as I said, I see Art.”

Then there were the occasional folks who saw the whole word: “Artwork.”

My point is that if I had had the time to focus-group it for a bit longer, I coulda maybe come up with something that worked with a wider demographic. But I didn’t. So what you see is what we got. At least it’s pretty.

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Deke McClelland

Self-appointed expert on all things graphics and imaging, here to answer your questions and serve your needs. More dekeBio here.